Saturday, 19 October 2013

From Old Buckenham to Phortse and backThe October meeting of the Old Buckenham Social and Wine Circle was a presentation by two of the members – Sheila Freake and David Hannah. In April this year, they went with a small party to Nepal to make their way in the Himalayas to Phortse. This was the village where Sheila’s husband, Tony, had helped with many improvement projects over two decades involving the building of a school and a medical centre, providing clean drinking water and improving the power supply. After Tony’s death, Sheila had taken some of his ashes to Phortse where they had been laid in a memorial fronted by a small bust of Tony, who had been known locally as “Papa Tony”. The voyage to Phortse from Kathmandu airport was mainly on foot, climbing to almost 6000 metres over 10 days. David had not made the whole of the journey to Phortse as he had been a victim – not uncommonly – of altitude sickness. It was a very interesting and illustrated talk from both David and Sheila, who explained that “Phortse is a lovely place, but there’s just no air!”The next meeting will be Thursday 14 November when a representative of Anglian Water will come along to say where our water comes from and where it goes to. This should be extremely interesting and informative and, as always, the meeting is open to anyone who wishes to come along to the Church Rooms at 7.45pm.